


shattered faith

by Sparrows



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Cipher Watcher, Gen, Moon Godlike Watcher, also i ship edér and my watcher so that PROBABLY leaks through into the text i'm sorry, as this is an expansion of this scene, listen i just really love soul bonds and shit like that, spoilers for the resolution of edér's personal quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13616829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparrows/pseuds/Sparrows
Summary: The Watcher held out her hand to him - palm upwards, fingers slightly curled, gentle and inviting. "If you want me to find your brother's path," she said softly, "then I will need you to walk it with me. Do you trust me?"With the Watcher's help, Edér seeks an answer to the question that has plagued him since the end of the Saint's War. But what is sought is not always easy to find...





	shattered faith

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't finished the game yet (I've just started Act 3) but DANG I have all the feelings?? So I wrote them down. I love the potential in the Watcher also being a cipher; the last scene of Edér's quest feels so much more impactful if it's the Watcher helping him as opposed to Grieving Mother or anyone else. This fic borrows a lot of dialogue from the game, but reworks it in places as well.

Edér rubbed the metal sun between his hands, clearing thick, dark river silt from its surface as best he could. It had rusted some, in the fifteen years it had been buried in the muck, but the carved silhouette of a vorlas plant was still just about visible at the sun's center.

"I've seen these before," he said, voice dropping to a hush. "They top the standards of Readceras, or did back when Waidwen was alive." He had many memories, most of which he preferred not to recall, of seeing Readceran banners waving in the distance from the other side of a battlefield. The idea that his brother could have been stood under any one of them - that he _had_ been stood under this one, during the battle that claimed his life - made his stomach twist.

Maiah nodded, almost to herself, as Edér flipped the sun over and over in his hands. It was surprisingly heavy, for such a little thing. "Well, it's something, at least. Just… not sure what it gets me." The metal sun sat in the palm of his hand, gleaming in the weak sunlight despite heavy cloud cover overhead. It was a grey and miserable afternoon, which roughly matched Edér's mood.

" _Eccosi_ , Edér, but I could take a look at it, if you would like?" Maiah cocked her head at him, nodding briefly to the trinket cupped in his palm. "I am good with objects. Sometimes a little too good," she muttered, wrinkling her nose in clear distaste. "Remind me to tell you later about my Aedyran tutor, back in the Republics… anyway, here." She held out a hand, beckoning, and Edér glanced down to it.

"It's a thought," he said with a shrug. "Lotta people would've touched this - standard-bearer's a position of honor most places, but the Readcerans actually took to fighting for it, from what I heard. Serious bunch." He ran a thumb across the carved surface. "Not a lot to hang hopes on, but hey, we were lucky to find anything at all."

He reached out and dropped the metal sun into Maiah's outstretched palm. "Let's see what you can see," he said, and then paused. "Better not make anything up, or you'll wake one morning with snakes in your bedroll, mark my words."

Though her eyes were as blank and white as always, Edér could have sworn they glinted with amusement. "Is this _before_ or _after_ you throw cold water upon me to wake me?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at him. He couldn't help but chuckle at the playful tone; it was almost enough to make him forget where they were, what she was about to do. But then her eyes fell to the sun in her hand and he remembered, and with it came a sobering sense of dread.

Maiah's fingers curled around the tarnished trinket, and Edér watched as she closed her eyes, the pale light that constantly twisted and shimmered about her head like her very own halo pulsing brighter and brighter like the quickening pace of a heart. For a moment, all was calm — and then Maiah spat a curse in Vailian, the light around her head throbbing brighter than ever before almost entirely winking out, and she practically threw the little sun back into the mud they'd dug it from.

Edér leaned forward, catching Maiah's elbow as she swayed unsteadily where she sat. She had the same shaken, vacant expression as she usually got looking at souls, every time the Watcher thing took her, and it was a long, lingering moment before she blinked twice, hard, and seemed to come back to herself somewhat. "You see anythin'?" he asked, trying without much success to keep the desperation from his tone.

" _Ac_ , yes, _ac_ , I— too much, it was too much," she wheezed, quickly, rubbing a hand over her face and waving the other in the air as though she was clearing it of a bad odor. Then she leaned down, scooping the metal sun from the dirt. She wiped it clean again and inspected it, twisting it this way and that as it caught the light. "Many souls have touched this. Each left an imprint. Your brother, he is— he— imagine one, lost amongst a crowd of a thousand."

"So you can't…?"

Maiah snorted. "That, I never said. Do not go putting these words in my mouth," she scolded, pointing at him - but there was a certain levity to the way she said it, a fond amusement twisting her mouth into something that was almost a smile. Then she was serious once more, lowering her hand. "I can find him, but… I did not know your Woden personally. I need a way to focus, to narrow things down."

She held out her hand to him - palm upwards, fingers slightly curled, gentle and inviting. "If you want me to find your brother's path," she said softly, "then I will need you to walk it with me. Do you trust me?"

Edér felt something shiver up his spine, a feeling he could not quite put a name to. But the answer to her question came to him immediately, without a trace of hesitation, and he leaned forward and laid his hand over the top of hers. "Yes," he said. It came out as a hoarse whisper.

Maiah's fingers tightened around his, and once more she bowed her head and closed her eyes. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the light crowning Maiah's head began to glow again, pulsing brighter, and Edér felt something stir, deep within him. He recognised the feeling of the Watcher's soul reaching out, touching his; he'd felt it often enough before, when she was using her powers in battle, but this was the first time the connection had lingered in such a way.

Edér reached out and clasped his other hand around hers, before he closed his eyes as well.

Maiah's soul swelled around his own, like a rushing wave. He let it, despite every instinct telling him to yank his hands away and break the bond. Memories swam to the surface of his thoughts, unbidden, at least by him. Memories of himself and Woden as kids, running around Gilded Vale, causing trouble - or rather, he'd cause trouble and let Woden make the apologies afterwards, like had always been in their natures. Then, when they were older, Edér and Woden helping on the farm, sowing seeds and gathering crops. Countless hazy summer days went by, burnished smooth and golden and peaceful by the passing of time.

One memory in particular surfaced, and this time it stayed. Edér felt his brows bunch together, felt himself flinch, but distantly, as though the motion belonged to another. It was the last time he'd seen his brother alive - the day he'd left to enlist in the war. Now more than ever he wanted to let go of Maiah's hand… but he forced himself to hold on, even as he heard his own voice, hurling the worst words he could think of in Woden's direction. Anything, he'd hoped at the time, anything to make him stay…

Then, all at once, the memory faded. Maiah's soul pressed against his, a wave of regret washing through him: partly his own, remembered from long ago, and partly hers, for making him relive such a dark moment of his life. He nodded, the apology accepted, and as if in response, he felt her soul retreat from him. Now her focus was shifting, though a thread still drew taut between the two of them, shining and golden in his mind's eye.

Images flickered through his thoughts, like the darting shapes of fish skimming just beneath the surface of a river. He resisted the urge to grab at them, if such a thing were even in his power; he could only watch them pass by, vague impressions of shape and colour and sometimes sound that slipped through his fingers, forgotten as quickly as they came.

It was something shifting in the air that made Edér open his eyes. Maiah's hand in his began to tremble, and he watched as her brow creased in concentration. The aura shifting and shivering about her head blazed like some kind of fire, even the starry speckles on her skin seeming to burn brighter than normal - but there was something strained about it, flickering as if she struggled to keep her grip on something important. Her hand grasped tighter at his, her nails digging into his fingers almost to the point of pain, and then—

—she let out a sigh, or breathed in a gasp, or both at once; the tension in her bled out like an open wound. The bond between them, that golden thread, now fell slack, Maiah's soul drawing away from his until he could no longer feel it prickling at the edges of him. He looked down and his eyebrows shot up with alarm.

"Your hand," he said urgently, and she uncurled it to reveal lines of red scored into her palm and fingers where she'd held the sun so tightly the metal had bitten into her skin. She offered him a weak, shaky smile.

"It will heal," she said simply. She made no move to reclaim her other hand from his grip, and he made no move to release it. She breathed out, long and low, and Edér waited a moment to let her recover. "My apologies," she murmured after a moment. "It has been… some time indeed, since I have attempted anything quite like this."

"Did you see anythin' that time, though? You looked like you were workin' real hard there." Edér's thumb traced almost absently back and forth over her knuckles, the motion strangely soothing. He kept his eyes trained carefully on her, the rest of the world nothing but a dim backdrop. If their companions were still present, he had no idea.

When Maiah next spoke, her words were soft, dreamy, as though she was still half-caught by a memory. "Your brother… Woden… he got as far as the Bay's gates before he turned north for Readceras instead. There was a city. It was beautiful." A crease formed between her pale brows, and her lips thinned somewhat as she pressed them together, as if already struggling to recall. Then she looked up at him, her blank eyes meeting his and holding him there. "The throne room, he knelt, he — Waidwen was there. His head was… it was just _light_."

Edér's eyes widened, even as he nodded in recognition. He felt his own breathing pick up - this was it. It had to be; only speaking with the Saint himself would have been enough to shake Woden, to make him turn sides as he had. "What'd he talk about with Waidwen?" he said, not daring to speak much above a breath. This was it, this was it…

Maiah shook her head. "I do not know," she whispered.

"No." Something fragile, brittle, inside Edér's chest shattered apart. He felt the splinters and thought for a moment they would choke him. "No, that's— that's not _funny,_ Maiah." He gathered up both of her hands between his own, pressed the tarnished standard-topper into Maiah's palms once more, closed his shaking fingers around them.

"Come on, now. That metal sun, my brother touched it. You _saw_ where he went, you _saw_ him talk with Waidwen - what'd they talk about?" He lowered his head, pressed his forehead to their joined hands, felt the desperation well up in his voice and in his eyes as he begged: " _Why'd my brother fight for Readceras?_ "

He couldn't see Maiah's face when she responded, but he could hear her well enough. "I… I wish that I had something better to tell you, _mia aimico_."

Edér took a deep breath, and then another. Slowly, he raised his head. He could not quite meet Maiah's gaze, nor could he completely keep his hands from shaking. He loosened his grip, but did not quite let go just yet. "Guess that's it." His voice was barely a whisper. He didn't have the strength left in him for anything more.

Maiah said, quietly, "We can keep trying. Find something else. Some other way to know why he… why he did what he did." Edér wasn't sure which of them she was trying to convince, and he shook his head.

"I don't think we will." He felt hollowed-out, brittle. Lifeless, like ash. "What would we even do? Look for more war relics? We were lucky to find _this_ one." He uncurled his hands, and noticed with a stab of guilt that in his desperation he'd pressed the sun into Maiah's hands hard enough that it had cut her again, turning her palms from blue to red. He lifted it away, threw the now-useless bit of metal into the mud where they'd retrieved it. He watched the river lap at it, and sighed.

"The soldiers Woden fought with are long dead. The battle was a massacre," he said numbly. "And… and whatever Eothas knows, he's not talking to anyone." He felt his shoulders slump, and ran a hand shakily through his hair. "Guess this was a waste of time after all, huh?"

Maiah stood, her grip on his hands tugging him to his feet. " _Sientere_ , Edér. Sometimes… sometimes we do not get what we wished for." She reached up, laying her palm against the chest of his armour, just over his heart. "If only we could." Some echo of the bond she'd used to dive into Woden's past seemed to return, in that moment, slow warmth seeping through the touch of her hand; a hollow comfort, and yet… a comfort, nonetheless. Edér held her hand there for a time with his own before letting it fall away.

"Y'know, it's a funny thing," he murmured, not looking at Maiah now but over her head, between the curved prongs of her crystalline horn-growths, into the slowly shifting light that pulsed there, slow and steady as breathing. He wasn't quite sure what he saw. "You can tell yourself that a hundred different ways. Makes no difference in the end."

The world seemed to leak back in, and from the corner of his eye Edér saw the shapes of their companions, returning from keeping a lookout. He swallowed thickly and shook his head, struggling to focus once more on what else had brought them out to the ruins, the old battlefield. "Come on," he said quietly, stooping to pick up his shield and saber. The familiar weight settled back into place like it had never left. "We can go now. I've seen all I needed to see, anyways."

The old metal sun lay abandoned in the muck where he'd found it. Edér tried not to turn back to look at it as they left.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations for the Vailian used in this fic:  
>  _eccosi:_ "excuse me"  
>  _ac:_ "yes"  
>  _mia aimico:_ "my friend" - technically, only "aimico" is canon Vailian text; I like the idea of "my" being "mia" or "mio" depending on whether the speaker is male or female.  
>  _sientere:_ "i'm sorry"


End file.
